Riverside County Slaps a Fee on New Homes

When Riverside County officials announced plans earlier this year to begin imposing a fee of $6,650 for each new home built, angry developers threatened to fight the proposal in court and at the ballot box.

The county’s response was immediate and nonnegotiable: Pay up or face moratoriums on new construction.

The fees, which went into effect on Monday, are intended to raise $2.6 billion for road, bridge and intersection improvements. County officials say the money is needed to ease gridlock in a region where the population of 1.5 million people is expected to double over the next two decades.

But it also represents an important shift in policymakers’ attitudes toward growth in the burgeoning Inland Empire from chronic worry to a sense of urgency.

A surge in complaints from constituents about exasperating traffic in and around Corona, Norco, Temecula, Hemet, Riverside, Murrieta, Moreno Valley and other communities has given policymakers a new political will. They are trying to control at least one result of the rapid spread of commercial, industrial and residential development into formerly open spaces.

“We had to do something; congestion could eventually kill our economy by slowing growth and driving investment elsewhere,” said Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione, a former Realtor.

Although transportation development mitigation fees are not all that unusual in Southern California, Riverside County’s system is unique in that it will be uniform throughout its jurisdiction. Beyond that, few other governmental agencies face such enormous challenges in terms of population growth.

The western end of the county, for example, is gearing up for a massive onslaught of new growth in dozens of square miles of flat agricultural and dairy lands near Chino.

Developers, traditionally generous donors to county election campaigns, argue that the fees could price home buyers out of the market in Inland Empire areas that have become booming residential suburbs for coastal commuters from San Diego to Los Angeles.

Despite their attitude about the fees, developers are not giving up on lucrative Riverside County.

“Our builders ran scared,” said Borre Winckle, spokesman for the Building Industry Assn. “They’d rather pay the fee than be run out of business.”

Most of western Riverside County’s 14 cities are expected to adopt similar fees by the summer. County officials have warned that cities that refuse to participate could face the loss of road improvement funds generated by a half-cent sales tax approved by voters in November.

Whether the new fees can bring the county back from the brink of suburban paralysis remains to be seen. Some say county leaders must figure out how to beat back the most vexing threat to transportation and what’s left of the natural environment: sprawl.

A year ago, a study conducted by researchers from Rutgers and Cornell universities faulted the Inland Empire for everything from its lack of economic and social cores -- two-thirds of the massive region lives at least 10 miles from a central business district -- to a haphazard, poorly connected road system that makes walking and bicycling perilous.

The region’s high number of traffic fatalities -- 49 of every 100,000 people die each year in car crashes -- stems from endless hours spent negotiating highways and packed high-speed arterials, the study said.

Policymakers have developed their own proposal to overhaul the county’s General Plan, develop new transportation corridors linking the area with San Bernardino and Orange counties, and acquire 153,000 acres of open space to protect endangered species and habitat.

That plan is expected to be approved by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors this spring.

In the meantime, UC Riverside wants to create a kind of suburban development think tank to help local officials guide future growth based on research, analysis and policy.

“The issues shaping our region speak to the nation,” said Andy McCue, associate director designate of the proposed center. “Over the next two to three decades, the Inland Empire will be an immense laboratory in which to test growth controls, density, land use, the creation of school districts in the middle of nowhere, and the ability of cities to retain their character.

“Right now, there is a tendency for people to drive through here on a weekend, notice there’s still some greenery and say, ‘I can afford to buy a home in this place,’ ” McCue said. “But they become classic [development foes] the first Monday morning they have to get on the 91, 210, 60, or 15 freeway and crawl to and from work as development fills in the empty spaces all around them.”

The destructive potential of unchecked growth is even the focal point of a collection of paintings and sculptures on display at UC Riverside’s Sweeney Art Gallery titled “Sprawl: New Suburban Landscapes.”

The remarkable thing about the artistic glimpses of freeway traffic, supermarkets, paved desert landscapes, and new homes sprouting up in rural settings is that, on first inspection, they don’t look remarkable at all.

“It’s time to look at the consequences of our actions,” said Karen Rapp, the museum’s curator. “Growth may be good for local economies, but communities must be responsible toward their residents and open spaces.”

That kind of talk is relatively new in Riverside County, where traffic congestion had long been associated with growth and prosperity.

“No other county in the nation is looking at growth in a more comprehensive manner than Riverside County,” said Rick Bishop, executive director of the Western Riverside Council of Governments, the agency in charge of spending the funds raised by the transportation fees.

“If we don’t offset the impacts of development,” he said, “the consequences will be disastrous.”